Arm and Leg Pain Treatment Lake Forest, CA

Maybe it is a weekend warrior who overused the joint in an athletic competition, an unfortunate participant in a car accident, a person lifting too much weight at work or home, or a grandmother who fell asleep holding their grandchild in one position all night. Typically, these situations cause almost immediate pain or discomfort due to muscle, bone, or nervous system damage and irritation.

However, many people develop arm and leg pain gradually over time and are relatively unaware of what may have caused it. When the patient is perplexed by what may have caused the pain, vertebral subluxations, arthritis, bursitis, tendinitis, and frozen shoulder become likely suspects. In addition to these sources of pain, switching or taking new medications such as antibiotics, birth control, and anxiety medications has been shown to contribute to the development of arm and leg pain.

If this list of possible causes wasn’t confusing enough, it has also been shown that arm and leg pain is often caused by “referred pain”. This pattern of pain is often used to describe the sensation of pain down the left arm that people feel during the start of a heart attack. Another example of a referred pain pattern is the pain that an inflamed gall bladder causes under the right shoulder blade. Frequently, our team sees patients who present with arm and leg pain referred from nerve irritation originating in the spine. If the spaces where the nerves exit the spine narrow due to misaligned vertebrae, the nerve becomes irritated and often produces pain along its entire course. The pain patterns associated with sciatica are a good example of this mechanism.